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Boulder's Caffeine Fix Map

Boulder's Caffeine Fix MapLet's face it, Boulderites need their caffeine fix. Here's a map for local and visitors alike to discover some of the city's (and surrounding town's) best places to find a good cup of java.

February 20, 2010

Runners jog past a new plaque now installed on the Boulder Creek Path commemorating the Arapaho Tribe's Spiritual Run into Boulder as past of the "Coming Home" event for Boulder's Sesquicentennial Celebration in 2009.

Arapaho youth participated in a run from the Sand Creek Massacre site in eastern Colorado, ending with a run along the Creek Path into downtown Boulder, where the Arapaho Tribe held dances, sold crafts and food and met the Boulder community on the Pearl Street Mall.

The plaque, located on the 17th Street overpass on the Creek Path, was chosen by the Boulder Sesquicentennial Committee to be a lasting remembrance of the event in Boulder's 150th anniversary.

February 13, 2010

Mary Ann Mahoney, left, director of the Boulder Convention and Visitor's Bureau, with Heather Clisby, project coordinator for the inaugural DiMe symposium at the St. Julien Hotel in Boulder.

Don Hall, left, producer of Disney's The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, was a panelist for DiMe. He also directed Walking Sleeping Beauty, a documentary being shown at the Boulder International Film Festival.

Who's a creative? Just about everyone, a panel of exceptionally creative people agreed at Boulder's DiMe Digital Media Convergence Symposium -- the inaugural year for the event that helped kick off the Boulder International Film Festival weekend.

But the emergence of a plethora of easier-to-use and often mobile technologies and media is widening how many people, including many children, are starting to put themselves into the rather loosely defined category of "creatives."

The huge acceptance of blogging and social media now makes millions of people across the globe into published writers. "I think self-publishing has widened the world" of creatives, said David Rolfe, a producer with Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Boulder.

The symposium, organized by the Colorado Governor's new office of Film Television & Media and the Boulder Convention and Visitor's Bureau, packed the St. Julien Hotel room with about 200 people to hear a panel of eight experts talk about what's hot in the fast-changing world of new media. Robert Reich, founder of Boulder's OneRiot who also has grown the Boulder Denver Tech Meetup from about 50 to 5,000 registered users, moderated the panel.

With the success of the 3-D Avatar movie, the topic of how quickly 3-D will be adopted was high on the list. Calling the hit movie a "significant event," Rolfe said the movie has changed viewers attitudes from whether they thought it was a good movie plot or not to "Wow, that was quite an experience."

Theaters are now in a catch-up mode, said Don Hahn, a producer with Disney, to jump on the more profitable 3-D movie experience. "It's a real game changer," he said, adding that there are now about 80 3D theaters being installed each week. The 3D theaters, he said, generate about 50 percent more profit than standard movies.

The panel also debated whether the new Apple iPad would be another "game changer." Boulder-based venture capitalist Jason Mendelson, a partner in the Foundry Group, had his doubts, saying he wasn't that sold on it yet, although he certainly was going to buy one.

But other panelists, including Aidan Chopra, with Google's Sketchup office in Boulder, and Krista Marks, one of the founders of Kerpoof that was bought by Disney Interactive Media Group in 2008, quickly disagreed, saying the iPad 's tablet functionality will start to change the way people can access both entertainment and games as well as their work.

The more ways kids can start to use creative platforms like Kerpoof on the Internet, the more they will continue to expand their skills to become the future technologists and engineers, Marks said.

Life is not all roses with so many emerging technologies, the panel agreed, citing how different platforms -- everything from the Apple iPhone to Google's Android and the new Palm Pre -- fracture the the playing field for software developers.

Brian Robbins, a game developer who started his own company Riptide Games, says his goal is to attract attention quickly in the very crowded world of mobile game apps, but getting each game to work on the different platforms makes his business much tougher.

Competing against some 30,000 to 40,000 game apps right now for mobile phones, Robbins said, "If you're not looked at in the first 30 seconds to a minute, they're (the user) are gone."

Other conclusions by the panel included:

* Internet users may have to realize that not everything is going to be free on the Internet. "We need to teach people to pay for stuff again," Sketchup's Chopra said. Sketchup has grown rapidly since its acquisition by Google because a "free" version is offered. But the company also sells a "pro" version with more features.

* No matter the media, the story and content is still critical. "Storytelling is in our caveman genes," Hahn said.

* The DVD format could soon be in trouble, as more people begin to download their media. Younger people are downloading more movies, and "they are totally satisfied," said Michael Brown, founder of Serac Adventure Films and Film School.

The panel forecast that it won't be long before the movie industry will offer new releases in DVD format and download formats on the same day as the movie is released. Piracy is one of the factors creating change. "If you don't give consumers exactly what they want, they will just take it," Mendelson said.

After the symposium, Mary Ann Mahoney, director of the Boulder Convention and Visitor's Bureau, said there's a good chance that DiMe might be expanded next year, perhaps to include some interactive workshops and more presentations.

A one-stop virtual gateway to the 2010 Winter Olympics, including bios,
medals won and hometowns of all the U.S. Olympians, is now online at
www.olympicsin3D.com.

Boulder-based
EarthvisionZ created the fun, dynamic site that
lets you experience the Olympics in a 3D world without ever leaving home.

Fly
through the city of Vancouver, see Olympic event centers, zoom down the slopes
on Whistler and Cypress Mountain race courses and learn more about the
completing athletes from around the world.

Designed for both Vancouver visitors as
well as the millions of Olympics followers around the globe, users also can
check on event times, current weather, and search results by athlete or
country.Tourists in the Vancouver
area can look up restaurants, bars or the nearest coffee shop as well as access
regional transportation, hotel information, and most relevant to travelers by
car – the International Border Station wait times.

With
a few clicks at www.olympics3D.com, track Facebook and Twitter feeds of
individual athletes from their online biographies; follow the instant, live
search of social media discussions about the Olympics from the Boulder-basedOneRiot search engine and even access television schedules for the entire games.

EarthvisionZ
has created similar sports and tourism information sites for the 2008 Beijing
Summer Olympics, Sports Illustrated’s Top 100 Golf Courses You Can Play, and
their own EarthgamZ site where they are currently aggregating a variety of
world sports on a virtual Earth.Their sport playgrounds combine the geospatial imagery of Google Earth
with the company’s patented search capabilities to assemble athlete stats and
profiles, game schedules, venues, sports news, medal counts, tickets and much
more on a single Web site.

“We’ve
built a site that lets you experience the excitement of the Winter Olympics
using a combination of social, search and Google Earth’s plug-in technology,”
said Carla Johnson, chief executive officer of EarthvisonZ. “ The site is
designed as a test-bed for future major global sporting events, including
everything from World Cup soccer to cycling to professional golf.”

Users
will be prompted to download the fast-loading Google Earth plug-in if they
haven’t used it already.The site
will be configured to be accessible to mobile phone users on their next event.

February 08, 2010

Boulder artist and author Tina Collen is hoping for some fast-moving sales of her book "Storm of the i: An Artobiography" with a release party on Friday, Feb. 12 at the downtown Boulder showroom of the Tesla electric sports car.

Collen says she'll talk about her memoir as an artist trying to understand her turbulent relationship with her father, and the astonishing event that occurred after she finished the book.

Collen's writing is interwoven with her memorabilia, her art and her work as a graphic designer.

The event runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., and guests will be able to look over the all-electric Tesla Roadster, with a range of about 244 miles per charge. The Tesla Gallery is located at 915 Pearl St.

To learn more about Tina Collen and her new book "Storm of the i,", visit www.TinaCollen.com.

January 28, 2010

Are you a Front Range blogger looking to get ideas, tips and network with others creating blogs on just about anything under the Colorado sun?

Well, just like you have to think everyday what you might write as a blogger, just do it and attend the Meetup of Front Range bloggers, alternating meeting sites currently between the Uptown Tavern in Denver and Gordon Biersch Brewery at Flatirons Crossing Mall in Broomfield.

Maybe you're just thinking you would like to start a blog. That's OK, too. In the meetups I've attended so far, there's always several people just getting started. I wish I had found the meetup before I started blogging, I would have done some things differently from what I've learned.

My 2010 resolution: Try harder to write shorter posts on my blog. So here goes. There's never enough time to get around and meet everyone at the meetups, but I'm always impressed by the blogging talent. Here are some quick links to some very cool bloggers I just met at the January meetup.

* BloginSong.com Camille Bright-Smith introduces herself as a blogger who sings rather than writes her blog. It's a different approach for sure. She's also starting to add other songwriters to her blog.

* callisto.fm Michael Sitarzewski is changing the way we listen to podcasts. You can browse different podcasts by channel. I haven't dug into this very far, but if you listen to podcasts,give it a try. He also blogs at zerologic.com.

* Macgetit.com There was a lot of talk about Apple's new iPad since it was released on the same day as the meetup. And Kevin Cullis, who blogs about using Macs, has a post on Why I Probably Won't Get an iPad. That was before the announcement. Wonder if he still thinks the same way?

I could go on but just remembered, I'm supposed to keep my posts shorter. The Bloggers Meetup has more than 300 members, although the meetups usually have about 20 to 30 attending.

January 27, 2010

Population
growth, natural as well as an in-migration from other states, vs. continuing
job losses and a state unemployment number that isn’t improving much.

It
happened in 2009, it’s forecast for 2010. But is it a problem? I couldn’t help
but wonder during a recent economic forecast by CU economist Richard Wobbekind
in Boulder.

More
people, disillusioned with worsening economies and few good jobs in their own
states, continue to pack their bags and head to the hills – our hills, namely
the Rocky Mountains.

Colorado’s
population increased by about 72,000 in 2009. Of that, about 32,000 were people
moving in, according to CU business researchers.

This
isn’t something new, of course, for bountiful Colorado. We’ve had substantial
net migration since the end of World War II, about 880,000 people between 1950
and 1990. We had another net gain of 359,000 in domestic migration and 58,000
in international migration from 1990 to 1998.

This year, CU
economists think the state will continue to attract people – more than 88,000,
taking our total population to about 5.17 million. Colorado topped the 5
million mark in population in 2008 and continued to grow right through the
recession.

Colorado’s
unemployment rate rose slightly in December to 7.5 percent; in December 2008 it
stood at 5.8 percent. Our numbers are better than many states, but experts all
say the real unemployment figure is certainly higher, easily double digit since
many people who’ve now lost their job benefits are simply dropping off unemployment
roles.

So I wondered about
this. More people continuing to move in – that’s a good thing perhaps for home
sales and rentals. But if they can’t find jobs, what are they going to do?

I asked this directly
to economist Wobbekind, who had made the point in his speech that a drop-off in
jobs combined with more people coming in would add another “pressure” point to
the state’s wobbly economy.

For 2010, the CU
business team forecast that the state would actually end the year with another
net loss of jobs, after losing some 100,000 jobs in 2009. Unemployment, they
predict, may climb to 8.1 percent.

A few other key
factors don’t bode well either for Colorado’s immediate future.

·The recession
has cut into the state’s overall “intellectual power.”

·Social
services are being squeezed throughout state and local governments.

So how might these conflicting numbers of higher in-migration of people
without enough jobs for newcomers, let alone the people who live here, somehow
be justified in the many ingredients that get stirred into the economic stew
every day?

Wobbekind offered me a few possibilities, stressing that these are “possibilities”
because they aren’t typically measured in key economic indicators. The new
census might be more revealing as it digs into just who is living here.

·One, there’s
strong evidence that the number of “self-employed” workers is increasing. As
people have lost jobs or decided to break out of the corporate world and strike
out on their own, many are working from home, contracting for their services
and just not showing up in measurable ranks of employment.

·Two, several
people in a household are living off the income of a single worker. In other
words, one person may have been hired, and the entire family of 4 or 5 moved
here, adding to the net migration number.

·Three, it’s
also possible someone in a new Colorado household continues to hold down a job
in another state, but is able to commute or even work virtually on that job. I
personally know of one woman, laid off from her job in Colorado, who recently
accepted a position out of state but as a Web editor on the Internet, she’s
able to continue to live here.

No doubt, as
technology continues to drastically alter the landscape of what jobs are
looking like in the new decade, economists and researchers are going to have to
figure out how to adjust their numbers accordingly.

Or, if the state’s
job picture does not improve, as happened in past Colorado downturns – the “in”
migration may suddenly turn to “out” migration.

January 24, 2010

This is part of a column I wrote in Boulder in March 2007, when I went to a very small bloggers meeting with Twitter founder Evan Williams speaking. Imagine the crowd he would draw now. I wonder what he charges now to speak?

At the time, Williams had 1,500 followers on Twitter. Today, I just checked and the Twitter CEO now has about 1.16 million followers. How far this company has come in the three years since I first heard of Twitter. You can now follow him on Twitter @ev and read his blog at evhead.com.

Here's what I had to say in 2007.

"I'm writing my story about Twitter."

Answering the question "What are you doing?" in 140 characters or less is the very simple business model of one of the newest social networking sites on the Web, Twitter.com.

It's called twittering, and founder Evan Williams said the site was created "more or less on a whim." Now, with the site getting rants and raves from bloggers around the world and user updates reaching 900,000 so far in March, Williams told attendees at a Boulder conference on Weblogs and Social Media that it's "taking over our lives."

Williams, also a founder of ODEO.com and before that, co-founder of Blogger.com, drew laughs showing some of the Twitter posts, including one of his own recently - "I just wrecked my car. I'm fine." Another example: "Internet. I'm in labor."

His audience at the Boulder Marriott, most surfing wirelessly on their laptops and one posting to the live demonstration of Twitter, seemed enthralled with yet another way to communicate to friends instantly.

Twitter, Williams explained, has been called everything from "blogging on crack" to "dodgeball but boring." He liked one blogger's description of "ambient intimacy." For a site that's only nine months old and still trying to figure out what it will be, Williams described it as simply a "blogging tool."

Already new applications are springing up, including Twitterific, a small desktop app for Macs, and Twittervision, which maps the location of anyone posting to Twitter. Another site, Twitterholic.com, lists the top 100 "Twits" ranked by their following of friends.

Williams is No. 5 on the list with 1,500 people - something he says he's not really encouraging because he doesn't want to see Twitter become another popularity contest.

January 21, 2010

Doug Gaddy, owner of Absolute Vinyl in N. Boulder, played some albums for customers at the store's grand opening. He shares the space with Little Horse Books, owned by Michael Price.

“A Hard Day’s Night,” the soundtrack to the 1964 British
comedy film starring the Beatles, is playing on my turntable.

I bought the album today, as well as “The Cry of Love” by
Jimi Hendrix, both in great condition, at the grand opening of Absolute Vinyl and
Little Horse Books, two Boulder retailers housed together in about 750 square
feet of space at 4474 N. Broadway in north Boulder.

The stores’ owners, Doug Gaddy at Absolute Vinyl and Michael
Price at Little Horse, have been doing business together for years, dating back
to when Gaddy began selling vinyl at Price’s Little Horse Vintage & Modern
Furniture at the former collection of small retailers on the corner of 15th
and Pearl – now redeveloped into new office and retail space.

The official opening day was busy, as vinyl collectors
mingled, browsed through the thousands of records, and, of course, compared
notes about release dates, cover artists and their own recent vinyl
“discoveries.”

One such collector is Patrick Selvage, who said he owns close
to 4,000 albums.

He slid an album out of its cover to show how the “matrix
number” of each album is etched in the groove area just outside the label. This, as well as other clues, he says,
helps collectors figure out the edition or “pressing” of the disc.Serious vinyl collectors, he adds,
start to look for different pressings of a particular album they like. And like
all collectors, that’s just one of the tricks of the trade. Selvage was buying
about $70 of vinyl, having found some interesting buys both in the value $3 bin
as well as higher quality albums ranging from $10 to $20.

Absolute Vinyl and its bins holding close to 10,000 of the 40,000 albums that Gaddy owns,
filed alphabetically and by genre, fill the front of the store, with Little
Horse Books taking up two smaller rooms in the back, where Price also is
selling some art.

It’s a friendly, relaxing atmosphere, and helps fill the gap
left by the recent departure of Bart’s CD Cellar in downtown Boulder.

“We’ve been looking for some space for awhile,” Gaddy says,
noting that downtown rents were too high for their small business.

“I missed the interaction of retail,” says Price, who has
about 2,000 books listed on Amazon, selling about 800 to 1,000 a month. “I tell
everyone it’s a full-time job done by two people,” with his wife helping,
especially with packaging and shipping.

Gaddy and Price are both buyers and sellers, getting leads
by word of mouth as well using their years of experience to know where and how
to buy.

“I’m always hunting,” says Gaddy, who sometimes travels to
East Coast cities like Washington and New York. Regional tastes become obvious,
he says. For example, Zephyr albums, the late ‘60s Denver group that gave
guitarist Tommy Bolin his start, are pretty common in Colorado but much more
desirable in places like New York.

“Doug’s vinyl collection is always meticulous,” Price says.
“I’m going to ride his coattails,” he adds, with the goal of improving the quality
of his own titles in different categories.

Speaking of pressings, I pressed Gaddy to give up some tips for collecting vinyl. But like all
good collectors, he was cautious in letting too many secrets slip out. “I work
my ass off to find really clear records,” he tells me.

His No. 1 tip for both the advanced audiophile or someone
just remembering how buying records used to make them happy (put me in that category)
is simple: Come visit his store; he’s always willing to help customers to learn
about any music. One celebrity customer who did drop in earlier – Boulder
native Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys.

Eventually I did glean some advice from both Gaddy and a
collector at the store:

·Go slow when first starting to buy. Learn what kind
of music you really like. Try online sites like allmusic.com or iTunes, and
listen to short clips.

·Go to YouTube, again to listen to many of the
songs, some often rare, that other collectors have uploaded.

·EBay also is good to get a feel for prices, as
well as details on rarer and collectible releases.

·Discogs is another huge online community-built
database of music information.

·When you travel, visit vinyl stores in different
cities, gathering information as well as supporting independent retail.

Eventually every collector starts
to figure out his own “secret” techniques. Do it enough, and your name gets
around. People start to call you.

Both Price and Gaddy say they’re
happy to come to anyone’s house that may have albums or books they’d like to
sell. It’s often easier than looking over boxes brought into the store, since
they’re often working with customers.

You can reach Price or Gaddy by
calling the store at 303-955-1519 or just stopping in and letting them know
what you might have for sale.

Price says he still finds good book
titles by browsing thrift stores, but admits, “It’s getting very competitive out
there.” Gaddy personally doesn’t recommend thrift stores for vinyl collectors,
because typically the quality just isn’t found there.

Annie Gaddy, Doug’s wife, is
helping at the store, as well as his sister-in-law Faith Evans. Price says
he’ll be at the store several days, splitting time between his online book sale
business of selling and another part-time job.

Most of
University of Colorado business economist Richard Wobbekind’s charts and graphs
suddenly started pointing up for 2010. Nearly all of them except, of course,
the federal deficit chart, which showed a plunging line downward illustrating
15 straight months of government red ink. Last year, the deficit hit $1.42
trillion, three times the record set in 2008 of $454 billion.

But that
chart was just a mere diversion from the real localized message of the evening
looking at 2010 for “Boulder & Beyond.”

And both
Wobbekind and a “power panel” of local business leaders examining retail,
banking, technology, real estate and advertising generally had some good things
to say this year’s local economy.

If there
was a consensus, it probably goes something like this: The U.S. recession was
really nasty, and Colorado, which lost about 100,000 jobs in 2009, didn’t too
so good either. But if you live in Boulder County and still have your job, you
should be thankful that the area’s combination of government, professional
services, university and manufacturing jobs at least made it better here than a
lot of other places.

In a
nutshell, here’s what the business experts see:

·Banking: Federal examiners are softening a bit,
and healthier banks that have raised capital and improved their portfolios
should start to lend more this year, said Pat O’Brien, market president of Guaranty
Bank and Trust Co. Banks’ loan portfolios in the county area are healthier than
many across the state. Across the country, there are still about 575 problem
banks being watched closely by regulators, but what he described as a “classic
credit crunch” should be loosening.

·Commercial real estate: Tebo Development Co.
Stephen Tebo talked about the difficulty of borrowing against “more
conservative” appraisals on commercial properties, but said his business had
gotten back on pace in the fourth quarter after a slow nine months. “I think
there was pent-up demand,” for space, he said. A perception of a glut of
commercial space for lease, especially in downtown Boulder, isn’t true, he
said, although cities in the county like Longmont, Louisville and Lafayette are
not yet filling up vacant space. “If we were willing to rent” to medical
marijuana dispensaries and growers, he added, “we would not have a vacancy.”

·Retail: Retailers didn’t see a rebound until the
holiday season, which turned out to be the best since 2006, said Kim Campbell,
senior property manager for Boulder’s Twenty Ninth Street shopping district.
While the news has been glum, luxury chains like Saks and Nordstrom are doing
better after consumers retreated to discounters for most of the year.In Boulder, Arhaus Furniture, the
Colorado Athletic Club and several new restaurants have opened, with three
retailers, the Container Store, XXI Forever and Ultimate Electronics filling up
the empty anchor space at Broomfield’s Flatiron Crossing vacated by Lord &
Taylor.“Game changers” in retail
include mobile applications like Red Laser for consumers to scan prices in
stores from their smart phones, and social media getting the word out fast on
events and special promotions.

·Technology: The mobile Internet is a powerful
trend in 2010, predicted Scott Green, engineering site director for Google in
Boulder. A surge in sales of smart phones is completely changing the way people
interact and work. Cloud computing is also making it easier for startups to run
without their own IT person, and a trend for more vertical and “end-to-end”
markets, such as Google selling its own phones, Amazon selling the Kindle
reader and Apple selling both music and players is only going to accelerate.
This will be good news for smaller entrepreneurs in the Boulder area who come
up with innovative products.

·Advertising: Smart marketers are going to get
more into the “core” of the product, said Chuck Porter, co-chairman of Crispin
Porter + Bogusky, which picked Boulder for a new office because they wanted
something completely “opposite” of their offices in Miami. Boulder has the
“right kind of juice” for the trend to more interactive digital media. CP+B
created one Facebook promotion for Burger King, telling people if they would
“unfriend” 10 of their friends, they’d get a free Whopper. After some 233,000
friends were dropped, Facebook asked them if they would pull the application,
he said.

CP+B recently helped launch a new Boulder Digital
Works program at CU, and although Porter agreed Boulder could keep moving
toward become a “digital media Mecca,” he’d rather not have the word get out
too much. “I want to hire” the graduates of the school we started, he said.